Mexican Birth certificate and apellidos

[doncoulter]

You raise some interesting questions, Bill, on the subject of Mexican apellidos. I can answer one question fully and the others partially. This being Mexico, things are complicated, so my answers will be, too.

First, Martha?s response makes perfect sense to me. She?s absolutely right that the bureaucracy tends to mix things up, and I would add that such mix-ups tend to become permanent. My wife?s acta de nacimiento, for example, misstates her true date of birth by exactly one month. Guess which DOB?the real one or the official one?she uses on important documents.

Now to your questions: Will the babies get a Mexican style Paternal and Maternal apellido? Will it be Byrnes de Byrnes or Byrnes de Sangduan? Or can we choose just a single last name?

I?ll take the second question first. If your wife?s last name is legally Byrnes except on IMSS documents, then I doubt Sangduan will enter into the equation. As for the ?de? part, you can forget it. Your twins would not be ?Byrnes de Byrnes.? The normal practice is that a Mexican child takes two apellidos?its father?s first (paternal) apellido followed by its mother?s first (paternal) apellido. These go one right after the other, with no intervening ?de.? For example, my wife?s father?s apellidos were Quiroz Esquivel, and her mother?s were G?mez Moure; therefore, Gela?s apellidos are Quiroz G?mez. There is no ?de.? Where the ?de? may come in is after a woman marries. Gela?s full name is Mar?a de los Angeles Quiroz G?mez (ignore that first ?de?; it?s not relevant to the present point), and that?s the name she uses most of the time on official documents. However, she can and often does choose to drop the G?mez and add a ?de? plus my surname: Mar?a de los Angeles Quiroz de Coulter. Any Mexican would understand that the ?de Coulter? means she?s married and her husband?s last name is Coulter. Is adding one?s husband?s name fully legal for most purposes? We?re not sure, but it?s a common practice. Sometimes she uses Quiroz de Coulter on official documents that are not too terribly important; she could probably use it with IMSS, for example. But for the really important official stuff, like passports and wills, she sticks with Quiroz G?mez.

Do men ever do the reverse?add ?de? plus the wife?s name? Not yet.

A further confusion is that some apellidos already include a ?de.? For example, de Le?n, or de la Madrid. If Carmen de Le?n married Miguel de la Madrid, she could conceivably call herself Carmen de Le?n de de la Madrid. One hopes she wouldn?t.

Back to your case: If your twins, then, take one Byrnes from you and another from your wife, they would be Byrnes Byrnes. Not Byrnes de Byrnes. As silly as Byrnes Byrnes might sound, there are many Mexicans who have names like Juan Jos? G?mez G?mez. As Gela likes to say, it?s the way that it is.

But would the kids have to be Byrnes-times-two? This brings us to your first and third questions. Here the short answer is, I don?t know. Who knows what the bureaucracy will allow you to do? And how much do you care? Is it important to you that the kids be named Byrnes period, or would Byrnes Byrnes be okay?

You may not have an option, of course. But maybe you will. Before I became a Mexican citizen, on some documents I got away with using my last name only, i.e., Coulter. On others, my mother?s maiden name was added, for Coulter Halverson. On still others, after I told some official I didn?t have a second surname, I was Coulter Ninguno. My middle name is Michael, and my car-insurance company thinks I have two surnames: Michael Coulter. I?ve never cared much about this sort of thing; the results might have been different if I had. The point is that even Mexican officialdom is often pretty loose about apellidos, at least with foreigners.

What may also be relevant to your situation?or, admittedly, may not?is that on my citizenship papers I?m simply Don Michael Coulter. Similarly, my IFE voting credential (the main credential Mexicans carry) has only the one apellido. In other words, even as a Mexican, I was given a choice! This surprised me. The citizenship and IFE folks knew, obviously, that I had a mother and that she had a surname, and they therefore could have insisted that I be officially known as Don Michael Coulter Halverson. But they didn?t. Is this a great country or what?

All of which I mention in order to suggest that you may have the option?one apellido or two??particularly if you push for it.

It?s important to note that most Mexicans use both of their apellidos only in formal, legal, and professional contexts. Day to day, most use only the first, paternal apellido. My wife, once again, is Mar?a de los Angeles Quiroz G?mez, but even her closest friends are unaware of the ?G?mez.? To take another example, Felipe Calder?n is certainly one of the most well-known Mexicans, but I bet not one Mexican in a hundred could tell you his second, maternal apellido. (It?s Hinojosa.)

So let?s say your twins are officially named Jack Byrnes Byrnes and Jill Byrnes Byrnes. My point is that those would be their formal names. In real life, hardly anyone would know they are Byrnes squared.

As an aside, this business of two apellidos leads many foreigners into error. My dentist, like most medical professionals here, uses both of his last names in his work: he?s Daniel Garc?a Nieto. Many foreigners refer to him as ?Dr. Nieto,? but that?s incorrect, Nieto being his second apellido. The correct way to refer him is as Dr. Garc?a Nieto or, more simply and more commonly, Dr. Garc?a.

Finally, Bill, you still have plenty of time to think about names for the twins. That?s because their names won?t be official until you register their births at the Registro Civil, and you can do that anytime within their first six months. Until then, you may try out different names every day if you like, and see what sticks.

Don